Sun Extends Virtualization Solutions to SMBs

Sun Microsystems has a plan to target the midmarket space with virtualization offerings backed by strong incentive and education initiatives.

Software giant Sun Microsystems, based in Santa Clara, Calif., today
announced that it has expanded its portfolio of small to medium-size
business solutions with the introduction of two new virtualization
solutions that combine Sun's x64 server and open storage products with
VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V software. Notably, Sun also plans to
offer vigorous support and education to SMB customers who are still on
the fence about virtualization.
"Coming into this market a little later than the other vendors, we have
to find a unique space to differentiate," says Sun's senior director of
Mid-Market Business David Simmons. "We don't have a lot of legacy
design points, so we've optimized for density, expandability and the
maximum memory support in all of our systems, as well as disk capacity."

Simmons says he knows Sun's offerings won't appeal to all midmarket
companies, so they've decided to focus strongly on SMBs who use
technologies like virtualization to grow their business. "We should be
targeting people who use IT for a competitive advantage," he says. "We
want to target people who use data to grow their business."

Simmons says he understands virtualization is a big investment for a
small business and that Sun is committed to helping potential customers
quickly and explicitly understand how the technology can help improve
their business. "When it comes to getting started, it has to be really
concrete what the savings are," he says. "Around administration costs,
the savings are pretty straightforward. You end up having a 3:1
expansion on server administration capacity. It's a simpler and more
scalable infrastructure, so you see big cost reductions in
administration costs."

A lot of the content Sun provides on their Web sites are tools to help
with analysis and helping SMBs understand the value and get them into a
position where they can try the software free of charge, Simmons says.
"What we want to do is make it really risk-free to try it," he
explains. "We're trying to make each step of the way easy and
meaningful for the customer. There's an education involved, and there
need to be incentives to get them involved."

The company says its overall commitment to open source software and
industry-standard hardware makes it easier and more affordable for SMBs
to access Sun's products. Customers can choose from a wide range of
products and platforms like the Sun Fire x64 servers and Ultra-SPARC
processor-based servers; multiple operating systems like Solaris 10,
Windows and Linux; and databases like Sun's MySQL database.

"This is an area where Sun is absolutely committed to grow," Simmons says. "And this is definitely a sweet spot for us."

Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.